Here's a hot idea: Why don't we send 10,000 tons of high level uranium waste to Russia?
You'd rather not?  Not until you buy your lead suit?
 
OK then, how about we send 10,000 tons of radioactive garbage to Russia AND throw in
$15 billion for Vladimir Putin.  For the cash, Putin must solemnly promise to store the potential
bomb-making material safely and not let any of it slip into the hands of the Iranians or the IRA.

Just when I thought the Bush Administration had adopted every crack-brained idea that could
threaten Mother Earth, along comes another.  This send-uranium-to-Russia scheme is the
creation of something called the Non-Proliferation Trust (NPT Inc), a Washington group which
‘grew out of extensive dialog with ... the arms control community and the environmental community.'

If by ‘arms control community' you were thinking Greenpeace, you'd be a bit
wide of the mark.  The Chairman of NPT Inc is Admiral Daniel Murphy, once
Deputy Director of the CIA and Bush Senior's chief of staff.   The other
seven  listed board members and executives include the former CIA chief
William Webster, two nuclear industry executives, one former Nixon
administration insider, the general who commanded the US Marine Corp, one top
Masonic official and, indeed, one certified greenie tree-hugger.

It may not be your typical save-the-world line up, but their idea is worth a
hearing.  Russia has a huge hot pile of ‘fissile material' - bomb fixings and
old nuclear plant rods - sitting in polluted Siberian towns whose very names,
like Chilyabinsk-14, sound radioactive.  NPT Inc's idea is that if we send
them more radioactive garbage, plus cash, Russia will then have the means and
obligation to store theirs, and ours, safely.

This month, the scheme got a big boost when the Duma, pressured by Putin,
abolished the Russian law which barred the nation's importing most foreign nuclear waste.

NPT Inc's assemblage of ex-spooks and militarists (and their lone green
compatriot) control the operation through three non-profit trusts.   But
non-profit does not mean that no one gains.

This self-described charity will pay a British-American deal-maker, Alex
Copson, some unidentified percentage of the deal.  NPT has been reluctant to
give details of Copson's potential gain from the success of NPT - it took
several calls and pointed questions - possibly because the
polo-and-sports-car afficionado with the posh accent lacks the diplomatic
gloss appropriate to this sensitive enterprise.  Copson notoriously described
the natives of the  Marshall Islands as ‘fat, lazy, fucks' when they nixed
one of his nuke dump schemes.  Copson, I'm assured,  is kept well away from
NPT's Russian operations.

Contractors will share a few billion, including German power consortium, Gellschaft fir
Nuklear-Behaltg mbH (GNB).  Dr. Klaus Janberg of GNB is director of NPT International.

But the real winner, should NPT succeed, would be the moribund nuclear
industry, which George Bush hopes to bring back from the crypt.  But there is
one huge obstacle: waste.  If you think about it, the only indispensable
appliance for a kitchen is a toilet; so too, one cannot build a nuclear plant
without planning for the end product.

At $15 billion, dumping in Russia is a bargain.  Since Russia is already a
nuclear toilet, who would notice a little more hot crud?

Russia's own environmentalists have noticed, but objections from their
Ecological Union are smothered by the ringing endorsement of the nuclear
issues chief of one of America's richest environmental groups, the Natural
Resources Defense Council.  NRDC's Dr Thomas Cochrane sits on NPT Inc's
MinAtom Trust board of directors painting the project with a heavy coat of  green.

What on Mother Earth would drive the NRDC man to front for NPT? Bernardo
Issel, director of the Washington-based Non-Profit Accountability Project sent
The Observer a copy of NPT Inc's draft, ‘Long-term Fissile Materials Safeguards
and Security Project.'  At page 18, one finds arrangements for the NRDC to administer
a $200 million Russian ‘environmental reclamation fund' for which the green group
will receive a fee of up to 10% of expenditures, a cool $20 million.

NRDC's Cochrane insists his group would have never taken that role.  An NPT
spokesman says the clause has been removed from a new draft contract, though
they have refused our request to see that document.

It would be wrong to assume that this is another case of greens selling out
for greenbacks.  The NRDC's Dr Cochrane is as straight a shooter as you'll
ever meet.  The problem here is not payola, but philosophy.  The NRDC
represents the new wave of environmental organization enchanted with the use
of market mechanisms.  The group is mesmerized by can-do entrepreneurs with
access to huge mounds of capital, and sold on the pleasant if naive idea that
the profit motive can be bent to the public good.

The NRDC and other pro-market environmentalists are always on the hunt for
what their prophet, Amory Lovins, calls ‘win-win' cases - deals which aid the
environment while making the big bucks for the corporate players.  To the horror
of many consumer advocates, NRDC stood with business lobbyists to push the
trade in ‘pollution credits' and promote de-regulation of electricity in California,
though the group did a quick flip on deregulation when the scheme  flopped.

The NPT scheme is the quintessential public-private partnership that business
greens find irresistible.  For Dr Cochrane, the uranium dumping scheme's
attraction is NPT Inc's promise, which cannot be easily dismissed, to provide
billions to clean up Russia's radioactive hell-holes.  And NPT also promises
to toss in $250 million to a Russian Orphans Fund.

Environmental clean-up, non-proliferation and orphans.  Why would Russia's green
activists turn away from this obvious win-win?  The answer, in a word, is "MinAtom."

MinAtom, Russia's ministry of atomic industries is, of course, the agency
which created the nuclear mess in the first place.  Can Minatom be trusted to
safely handle both the nuclear fuel and faithfully use the several billion
for environmental clean-up, not to mention the orphans?

USEC - What's a bit of bias, self-interesting and self dealing among friends? 

As soon as I heard, ‘MinAtom,' I ran to my notes of the Observer's interview
earlier this year with Dr Joseph Stiglitz, one-time chief of Bill Clinton's
Council of Economic Advisors.  During a tea break, the economist told me
about an incident involving MinAtom which disturbs him to this day.

In July 1998, the Clinton Administration privatized the United States Enrichment
Corporation, USEC.  The privatized USEC proved inefficient at enriching uranium,
but exceptionally efficient in enriching several Clinton associates.  Hillary's sidekick
Susan Thomases was a USEC lobbyist.  The law firm that defended the President in
one of Bill's bimbo law suits picked up $15 million for work leading up to USEC's flotation.
A federal judge concluded that documents USEC tried to conceal suggest the privatization
decision was influenced by, "bias, self-interest and self-dealing."

To sell privatization, Clinton's buddies at USEC promised their corporation would buy up
tons of Russia's old warhead uranium.from MinAtom.  As with NPT, the sales pitch was that
private industry by taking over government enrichment operations, could reduce the amount
of bomb ingredients in Russia's hands at no cost to the US treasury.   Another public-private win-win.

But Stiglitz, ever the hard-nosed economist, he could not fathom how this new
profit-making corporation pay the Russians above market price for the uranium..

The answer was, USEC couldn't.  In 1996, some birdie dropped a damning
document on Stiglitz' desk.  It was a memo indicating that MinAtom had
demanded USEC take about double the amount of uranium originally expected.
Rather than take the costly deliveries, USEC quietly arranged a payment to
MinAtom of $50 million.  Stiglitz called it, "hush money."   USEC says it was
a legitimate pre-payment for the hot stuff.  However one describes it,
MinAtom was more than happy to play along, for a price.

Yet NPT Inc tells us that MinAtom and US private enterprise can now form a
trustworthy partnership to safeguard nuclear material for the next few
thousand years.  At first, this puzzled me:  NPT Inc's board is led by the
CIA and military men who pushed Star Wars which they sold on the premise that
Russia has probably let slip nuclear material to unnamed ‘rogue states.'

But I think I've solved this puzzling conundrum.  What we have here is the
ultimate, and very green, recylcing program:    NPT ships America's uranium
to the Russians, who lose track of a bit here and there ... which falls into
the hands of a Rogue State ...  which then returns it to the USA perched atop
an intercontinental ballistic missile ... which is shot down by the
trillion-dollar Star Wars defense system.  Win-win for everyone.
 

At www.GregPalast.com you can read and subscribe to Greg Palast's columns and
view his report for BBC Television's Newsnight, "Theft of the Presidency."